Willie Randolph is still the Mets manager, but he got only a lukewarm vote of confidece from team officials. / Associated Press photo

Written by

Sam Borden

Journal News columnist

There were four people in the room yesterday at Shea Stadium and only two fair or reasonable choices for Mets ownership to consider in the case of Willie Randolph: Fire him as manager or give him a guarantee that he'd keep his job for the rest of the season.

Either one would have been understandable and defensible. Either one could have been seen as the right choice.

Yet somehow the other three people in the meeting along with Randolph got it all wrong. Somehow, Fred and Jeff Wilpon and GM Omar Minaya came up with a solution that wasn't really a solution at all.

Instead of a quick parting of ways or a legitimate vote of confidence, Mets officials did nothing. The situation is, unbelievably, the same as it was two days ago and two weeks ago. Is Randolph still the manager? Yes. Will the questions about his status arise the next time the Mets lose two games in a row? You better believe it.

At one point during the late-afternoon press conference yesterday, Randolph was asked if he was given a guarantee that he wouldn't be fired before the end of the year. His answer? "They didn't say that." Right.

Minaya did his best to say "there is no limbo," but the truth is that what the Mets did yesterday was try to put the world's biggest band-aid on their manager's quickly growing wound. It may help for a day or even a few, but there was no real healing done, no real addressing of a problem that has everyone in baseball wondering whether this year's Mets have really gotten over the disaster that last year's Mets produced.

The past week was, in many respects, symbolic of how the season has gone: The Mets went into Yankee Stadium in turmoil, with Randolph already under fire. Then they beat the Yankees two straight and all seemed right ... until they lost four straight in Atlanta and two of three in Colorado. Add in some incredibly ill-timed comments from Randolph to The Record involving race and how he is perceived publicly, and the maelstrom surrounding the Mets' skipper needed a strong resolution following his two-hour sit-down with the Wilpons and Minaya. It didn't get it.

The worst part about the non-decision is that it makes Met ownership guilty of the same sin Randolph committed with his ludicrous assertions that, essentially, Isiah Thomas didn't get a fair shake with the Knicks because he is black. By saying that, Randolph created an unnecessary distraction for his players that can only hurt their ability to perform on the field (in addition to making himself look like an idiot).

Now, Met ownership has done the same thing. They had a chance yesterday to remove a distraction for the players, to take off the pressure that comes with showing up for work each day wondering whether your boss will be there, too. If the Wilpons had fired Randolph, it would have been the ultimate wake-up call for the players; if they'd given him a year-long commitment, the players would have been able to relax, knowing they wouldn't be facing questions about their leader following every game.

"It is a distraction," Carlos Beltran told reporters. "The reality is people say, 'It doesn't affect the ballclub' but it does. You come to the ballpark wondering what's going to happen."

Beltran likened the situation to when he was in low-budget Kansas City and would have to show up each day in the weeks leading up to the trade deadline wondering whether this would be the afternoon that the Royals would finally pull the trigger and deal him somewhere. It was unsettling, off-putting and hardly conducive to playing his best. By leaving Randolph hanging, the Mets' owners have forced the Mets' players to continue dealing with a similarly unnerving situation.

Why do it this way? No one can be sure. Neither Wilpon showed up at the press conference yesterday, and there haven't been many public pronouncements from ownership recently anyway. Randolph's contract runs through 2009 and the Mets are paying him $2 million this year and $2.25 million next year - a lot of money not to manage, yes, but not so much when you consider the team's overall payroll of $138 million and its 23-25 record going into last night's game against the Marlins.

Supposedly, the Mets have state-of-the-team meetings every year around Memorial Day. And supposedly the impetus for this particular gathering was primarily for the Wilpons to get a firsthand explanation from Randolph regarding his bizarre comments. Everyone still knew what it was really about.

The Mets have been bad. Very bad, really, to the tune of four games under .500 since last June 1, including the historically awful collapse last September that kept them out of the playoffs. When things like that happen, the manager is the one who has to answer and hard judgments have to be made.

You could argue the decision either way, and Mets fans - on talk radio, message boards and sports bars all over the city - have been doing just that for weeks. One can only imagine the Wilpons did plenty of soul-searching of their own over the past weekend, too.

The Mets needed to make a call on this one, simple as that. They couldn't do it. In baseball, you're either safe or out. Somehow, Randolph winds up being neither.